Cantankerous Chicanery

Money. It’s everything to us. And in this current economic downward spiral, it’s disappearing faster than the Grand Wizard at a Soulja Boy concert. To me, it’s quite odd that we put such value into quaint little pieces of paper, these green slips and shiny silver coins. Money is only valuable because we imbue meaning into it. If tomorrow everybody woke up and realized how silly it is we fight over thin rectangualr slips of parechement, well, then, that’d solve this fiscal crisis right there, wouldn’t it?

The nobler instincts of mankind are to shun money in favor of a higher spiritual truth. But, I ask you, what is this higher truth? It’s never explicitly defined or explained to us. Are we seeking a Buddhist means of nirvana? If so, this is impossible at the worst, unlikely at best in the face of modern society. When you have a mortage to pay, a television bill to mull over, and food to buy, one doesn’t have any time left over to meditate on the dimensions of reality.

Critics on the left-wing will advance socialist ideas, a communist means of overthrowing society. Sad to say, this will not work. It pains no lesser than me to say this, because in my younger years I was a hardcore anarcho-Marxist. I would look at the CEOs and sneer at how they got rich on the backs of the working class. I still do but as time goes on I’ve lost hope in a prletariat uprisng. In an age of Britney Spears and “my yard is more well-kept than your yard”, people aren’t going to want to take down the system or puruse through Marx’s writings after a 20-our workday.

And it’s not just my cynical disillusionment with people that’s caused me to form a critical eye towards a money-free utopia. If you take away money and instill a form of bartering, as I and others had wanted to do, people would evenually decide a wool coat is the standard for all transactions. Pretty soon some people would have more wool coats than others and this would lead to the general disenfranchisement of hierarchies and we’d be back to square one. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s not money these idealists want to stamp out, but greed. And let me tell ya, greed is older than humanity itself. Trace back the origins of human history and I’m sure you’d find there was one member of the tribe who wanted more dinosaur meat and got it through sheer power of force. Fuck, you couldn’t get twelve people to form an orderly line at Baskin-Robbins, you think you can get a whole world to renounce their selfish ways and form a utopia based on peace, love, and brotherhood?

There will be those that say our egotistical outlook is shaped by the culture we are raised in. As products of Western civilization, we see the world through a self-based lens and are taught to forge our own path. True. Perhaps man’s essential nature is not corrupted by the emerald affliction. But remember that we are still victims of a capitalist society. We will not change or suddenly wake up and say, “Fuck money, let’s all hold hands and cook and produce goods for each other’s welfare!” Be honest, who really sees the appeal in plantin crops and toiling at argiculture for 14 hours a day so your neighbor can have dinner that night?

Lest you lose your faith, O’ McLennon, keep in mind this isn’t some objectivist prick talking here. I feel for the common man, the working-class. The tainting influence of business disgusts me. What profit produces is a single-minded view of success, at the expense of others’ well-being. The sad fact is, everything comes down to money. It doesn’t matter how many independently-owned music shops you frequent or how tattered your clothes are, at the end of the day you work a job (even if you don’t think of it as a job and it’s something you love) to get a paycheck to go get things you need.

Money is basically a concrete way to represent the abstract ideal of power. Whoever has the most cash is the one we look up to. Sports players, politicians, entertainers. Fuck the poor sap washing dishes at the local eating hole to take care of his kids, we want the irresponsible rapper who throws away stacks by “making it rain” at the local strip club. It divides the haves from the have-nots. How much money you have is a representation of who you are in today’s world. All men may be born equal but they certainly don’t end up that way.

When we chase after money, we lose sight of everything else. I can tell you this first-hand, because whenever I log into this here Today site of mine, and I see only 28 cents in my account, I’m the first one on the message boards and search engines trying to promote the shit out of this blog. I lose sight of the artistic purpose of my writing and just try to profit off this and it makes me feel like a dirty whore. But hey, what else am I gonna do? That’s the reason I, and a lot of others of us, gt into this gig in the first place.

The American dream has always been that of DIY prosperity. We are led to believe in this fantasy, and when that dream becomes a nightmare, we are left poor, broken, disillusioned. When the pots of gold become declarations of bankruptcy and foreclosure, we get angry and shun the system. This soon-to-be depression won’t be the beginnings of an overthrowing of the fat cats in Congress, trust me. Rest assured, as the Joker said, “people are only as good as their situation is. When things fall apart, they turn on each other like wild animals.” When Wunderkind Obama turns this country around, people will go back to being smiling cubicle drones and mindless little sheep, content in their faith in their country.

In the end, the riches we crave end up destroying us. You either slave away at some crappy minimum-wage job and end up with broken bones and a shattered soul at age 60 or you become a millionaire and die alone in your mansion because you were such a financially-driven prick. What they don’t tell you abut poverty is that, for better or for worse, it fosters collectivism, toughness, and resourcefulness. How else do you think Jay-Z rose to the top and is now on the Forbes 500 list? He grew up in the roughnest part of the New York ghetto. He developed the same strand of business senses an economics professor has, only he praciced it on the street. It’s either fight or die.

So next time you go to the bank and withdraw money, think about how you’re continuing to further our system of capitalism, even if you intend to go buy that new Mars Volta album. Money is corrupting and lifeless but like herpes on a crack whore, it’s here to stay. I’m not trying to sound defeatist but every little service we render cash for, even if it’s absolutely necessary for our sustained life, keeps this flow of income going. Think about it.

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